Review: Exit Party

October 1, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Exit Party
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Pages: 320
Release: September 15, 2026

Emily St. John Mandel’s novels might just not be for me. This is the third book of hers that I’ve read, and I’ve found them all to be quite underwhelming. I find her prose flat and uninteresting. The hook of parallel worlds is en vogue these days, but St. John Mandel does little new with the conceit here.

The plotting and dour tone don’t help matters. It’s a premise that could lend itself to playfulness, surprise, or more creative stakes, but the novel rarely capitalizes on those possibilities. Neither the premise nor its execution was compelling enough to overcome my disinterest in her writing style.

The HBO adaptation of Station Eleven is my favorite piece of television of the past decade, but I was similarly left cold by the source material. Count me in if HBO takes the reins on an Exit Party limited series, but this was not my cup of tea in novel form.

★★¾

Review: The Living Realm

September 16, 2026September 16, 2026Leave a comment

Title: The Living Realm: A Novel
Author: Jordan Tannahill
Pages: 160
Release: September 8, 2026

Vivid, clear-eyed, richly observed and carefully composed. Tannahill conjures the past, present, and that which bleeds between them. Set by a lake that is a place of communal congregation, our protagonist encounters his past in seemingly supernatural ways, with lost loved ones reappearing on those banks at random. The lake serves as a mirror, a window, an ever-evolving membrane between the past and present, a site of witnessing, of seeing and being seen. This is a short but affecting novella that leaves a lasting impression.

★★★★¼

Review: Rabbit, Fox, Tar

September 11, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Rabbit, Fox, Tar
Author: P.C. Verrone
Pages: 304
Release: June 2, 2026

A reworking and recontextualization of the “Tar Baby” folktale, in which a mysterious woman arrives in a seemingly idyllic town, only for every townsperson who encounters her to be irrevocably changed.

P.C. Verrone unfurls his story with a deft hand, balancing fabulism with a disquieting atmosphere that captivated me from beginning to end, while thoughtfully exploring themes of personhood, racial identity, gentrification, and inheritance. A phenomenal debut novel, and I’m excited to see where Verrone’s career goes from here.

★★★★½

My thanks to the public library for lending a free copy in exchange for nothing at all! ☺

Review: The Vivisectors

August 19, 2026Leave a comment

Title: The Vivisectors: A Novel
Author: Missouri Williams
Pages: 288
Release: May 21, 2026

An atmospheric fever dream that’s frustrating and fascinating in equal measure. Missouri Williams conjures a setting where the sharp details of reality have been sanded off. Modern technology exists, but everything feels like a hazy simulacrum of the real world. Only three professions seem to matter: academics, architects, and gardeners. In a deteriorating and depopulated world, the gardens grow unchecked, and only the mercurial bands of gardeners can control them.

This is definitely a vibes-over-plot type of novel, with frequent diversions from the main narrative interrupting the loosely told story, as relayed by an unreliable and detached narrator. I found it all quite entrancing, but never felt like I fully understood what its broad metaphors were meant to represent. Character motivations are often inscrutable, and long, rambling descriptive passages only add to the sense of disorientation. Your mileage may vary here, as this will definitely land with some readers more than others.

★★★¼

My thanks to the public library for lending a free copy in exchange for nothing at all! ☺

Review: Seek Immediate Shelter

August 14, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Seek Immediate Shelter: A Novel
Author: Vincent Yu
Pages: 304
Release: May 5, 2026

A short story collection (masquerading as a novel) with an incredible hook—a text alert about an incoming missile sends a community into a frenzy. This cataclysmic pressure valve opens and the delicate psyches of the residents we follow are laid bare. Yu plays with expectations in an amusing way, as you never know where in each story the missile alert will blare or how the character will react to it.

Each of the subtly interconnected stories has an emotional hook that sucks you in, exploring familiar themes of familial strife, parent-child discord, falling in love, falling out of love, despair, hope, addiction, and the cracks within us that can sometimes turn into fissures.

Each character’s portrait is tenderly rendered and moving, as Yu dives deep into their headspace under extraordinary circumstances. And while the collection never reaches the heights that such a stellar premise might promise, it still gels well and is a worthwhile read.

★★★½

My thanks to the public library for providing a free copy in exchange for nothing at all☺

Review: The End of Everything

August 9, 2026Leave a comment

Title: The End of Everything
Author: M. John Harrison
Pages: 208
Release: October 13, 2026

Surreal. Ethereal. Eerie. Off-kilter. Awash in extreme, casual violence. Difficult to parse with little plot or story to cling to. At times, like if Jeff VanderMeer wrote My Favorite Martian. At others, so slipstream as to be ungraspable. Its strangeness is a feature, not a bug, and while initially intriguing, its opacity becomes overwhelming by the end.

I can certainly see how this would benefit from another readthrough, which likely boosted it among Booker Prize judges – but I’ll leave the rereads to them. Once was enough for me.

★★¾

My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Ply

August 5, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Ply: A Novel
Author: Hernan Diaz
Pages: 464
Release: September 29, 2026

Having not read his prior work, but being aware of his growing literary stature, I was pleasantly surprised by the accessibility of Diaz’s writing. His lyrical prose expertly conjures a dilapidated but vibrant, thrumming city that persists amidst its deterioration. Evocative descriptions include a river that “doesn’t run but oozes…like molten ore” or vacant warehouses reclaimed by roots that have “clawed their witchy fingers into the plaster…with an invisible slowness…in the gentlest of tantrums.” I loved these descriptions. I was equally drawn to the way he explores the main character’s background through flashbacks that add depth and texture to her character.

The second half of the novel abandons much of what I enjoyed about the first half, however. An abrupt pivot from first- to third-person narration feels gimmicky and doesn’t justify itself by the book’s end. That, paired with plot beats that require heavy exposition of quantum theory, really dragged things down. The more it leaned into this, the more I leaned away. I appreciate the time and effort Diaz put into untangling the book’s thornier quantum entanglements,* but the story is worse for it.

In all, Ply is most effective and affecting when it drills deep into its characters, and much less so when it gets tangled in convoluted quantum mechanics. That said, I really enjoyed Diaz’s writing and felt that the extended time I spent in this world was worthwhile.

★★★¼

*The acknowledgements section really shows how seriously Diaz took the research for the novel.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: May We Feed The King

July 18, 2026Leave a comment

Title: May We Feed the King: A Novel
Author: Rebecca Perry
Pages: 264
Release: October 20, 2026

At first, this book seems destined to be the most interesting novel about the procurement and placement of fake fruit you’ll ever read. Soon after, though, we’re swept into an unnamed kingdom and placed at the feet of a nameless king, oh so burdened by the weight of his crown.

Both narratives are equally engrossing and could have carried novels on their own. Perry pairs them instead, inviting us to juxtapose two lives shaped by grief and the weight of expectation. The decorator possesses a freedom the king can only dream of: she tells the story, arranges the objects, and creates a scene of her own making. The king, meanwhile, is beset by the ceaseless gossipmongering of his court and has little control over the story being told about his reign. Only when he learns to harness those narratives and use them for his own ends can he begin to free himself from them.

I’m still mulling over exactly what these two stories achieve together. Individually, though, they’re both engrossing.

Through silky-smooth prose and an eye for exacting detail, Perry has stitched together two wholly entrancing tales. Each is worthy of your time. I enjoyed this greatly.

★★★★

My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Moon Papers

June 24, 2026Leave a comment

Title: The Moon Papers: A Novel
Author: Emmalea Russo
Pages: 336
Release: June 30, 2026

What begins as a delightfully off-kilter chronicle of the impending launch of a massive art installation, Moon2, eventually strikes a discordant note as the unfocused and unrestrained narrative loses any semblance of cohesion.

I did find much of the commentary surrounding the creation of a second moon to be biting and sharply observed. Each character responds to the imminent launch in different and often amusing ways, ranging from deep skepticism to general indifference. I just wish the narrative gelled better overall, because there is a lot of interesting writing from Russo here. At times, it made for intoxicating reading; at others, it felt as though the novel was drunk on its own supply.

★★★

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.